Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Gary Mason writes about the combination of fatigue and outrage which is producing a particularly toxic mix for anybody attempting to limit the damage caused by COVID-19. Phil Tank laments the sense that protecting people from avoidable infection and death has become controversial, while also reporting on "Unified Grassroots" and other anti-public health forces who have organized to create that reality. And Adam Hunter highlights how Scott Moe's messaging about and to unvaccinated people has turned deferential even as more dangerous variants have emerged.

- Robert Hiltz discusses how Ontario has been one of many jurisdictions which has repeatedly wasted the downtime between waves by choosing to operate in denial rather than doing anything to prepare for foreseeable events. Don Darrah discusses how conservative premiers including Moe are using the damage they've inflicted on health care systems as an excuse to turn more and more necessarily medical services into profit centres for their donors. And Catherine Varner writes about the physicians who are looking at leaving jurisdictions or even the profession due to the violence directed at them by anti-vaxx extremists. 

- Van Badham writes about the crank and conspiracy behind anti-public health protests around the globe. And PressProgress has offered plenty of important reporting on the #FluTruxKlan - including a systematic look at its donors, as well as reports on the intention to pursue intimidation and violence for political ends and how that's been carried out.

- Finally, Cam Scott writes that there are limited lessons for progressive organizers to draw from the right's populist organizing which is necessarily built around fabrications and illusions rather than solving real-world problems. And John Geddes discusses the institutional differences that have helped somewhat in limiting the translation of far-right ideology into formal power.